But although many Americans see cranberries as a staple for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we associate them mainly with the winter holidays – unlike, say, mashed potatoes and gravy. That’s a problem for the cranberry business, which faces an uncertain future as supply wildly outstrips demand. The industry is working to boost demand for cranberry products at home and expand new export markets in Asia and Latin America.

I have spent close to 20 years studying farmers, food executives, eaters, tastemakers, activists and politicians, attempting to better understand, among other things, how niche, novel and/or foreign foods become commonplace over time. Many of these lessons are explained in my recent book “No One Eats Alone: Food as a Social Enterprise.” The history of food is full of tales where supply initially preceded demand, proving that necessity isn’t always the mother of invention. Sometimes it works the other way.

To harvest cranberries, growers flood the bogs and collect the floating fruit. MA Office of Travel and Tourism, CC BY-ND

Boom-and-bust cycles

In agriculture, short-term profits have a way of blinding players to the long game. When crop prices rise, farmers expand production, creating surpluses that push prices back down again. Cranberries are a case in point.

Adjusting for inflation, cranberry prices increased at a steady 6.3 percentfor almost 25 years prior to the mid-1990s. In 1996 cranberries hit $65 a barrel, which led to record crops and oversupply in ensuing years. By 1999 cranberry farmers were getting a paltry $17.20 per barrel.

Reeling, the industry needed a savor. It came in the form of a dried-up sugary snack: Craisins, created by the Ocean Spray co-op, which controls 65 percent of the U.S. cranberry industry. Competitors were quick to jump on board with their own versions, more blandly branded as “dried cranberries.” Prices rose to record levels, and farms once again expanded production. By 2008 Ocean Spray was reportedly paying growers $70 per barrel.

Craisins boosted profits by generating demand, but leftover cranberry juice concentrate sat orphaned in storage thanks to flat cranberry juice sales. By 2015 cranberry prices had fallen to $8 per barrel. It takes a price of $30 to $34 for farmers to break even.

Theme and variations. Shutterstock.com

Bogged down

Unlike most Midwest crops, cranberries are perennials. Once planted, a bog can produce indefinitely. Some are over 100 years old. But this also means that cranberry farmers cannot simply convert bogs to soybeans or corn in years with low cranberry prices. As one former cranberry grower from Carver, Massachusetts put it, the land “generally isn’t good for anything else.” He covered his four acres of cranberry bogs with solar arrays and now produces a megawatt of power.

Ocean Spray execs are hoping for another miracle, this time from a group of organic compounds called proanthocyanidins. Those are the powerful antioxidants that, among other things, make cranberry juice so effective at treating urinary tract infections. The company is adding proanthocyanidins into low-calorie juices. It is also energetically marketing cranberries worldwide, including in countries that don’t even have a word for “cranberry.”

How can such a distinctively American, holiday-tied product make a break for the mainstream? Consider the story of the once-lowly soybean.

From cattle feed to human staple

Until the 1970s, most Americans viewed soybeans as a nonfood item. The stigma was so strong that soybean oil had to be labeled vegetable oilbecause no one would buy it otherwise.

“It was viewed as what cows ate, not [as] people food,” an American Soybean Association representative recently told me. Today the U.S. edible soybean industry, having rebranded its product as “edamame,” is approaching $5 billion in annual revenues, up from $1 billion just 20 years ago.

From cattle food to trendy snack.Protographer23, CC BY-SA

Soybeans got their big break in 1971 when they were added to the list of commodities supported by the National School Lunch Program. A humble start as a meat extender accustomed a generation of Americans to the idea that soybeans could feed more than livestock.

I call this the bridging pathway, and have seen it work successfully for dozens of foods, including tofu hot dogs, edamame chips, soy burgers and cricket gumbo. The key is to incorporate new foods into existing meal patterns and dietary behaviors, rather than than trying to displace century-old practices and recipes overnight.

Bridges usually lead to somewhere, so this pathway implies a long game. First you get people used to the idea of eating a food by using it to extend another, more acceptable food. Then you get them to eat it straight. As my American Soybean Association contact explained to me, “Now it’s about making it normal, even cool, to eat edamame,” by getting cooked edamame into schools and into the hands and mouths of trend makers, including teen social media personalities and vloggers.

A berry for all seasons

Eating cranberries straight might not be on the immediate horizon. If you’ve ever tried a fresh one, you’ll know why: Pucker-tart! Now, however, they are associated almost exclusively with winter holiday dinners. There are 11 other months and two other meals in every day when we could be eating them.

Taking a lesson from soybeans, the cranberry industry might pursue the angle of meat filler – though I’m sure the marketing wizards that came up with “Craisins” could find a better term. As I can attest from growing up in rural Iowa, there is a powerful imperative in some parts of the United States to serve meat at every meal, or at least something that looks like meat. I have heard chefs praise cranberries’ properties as a meat extender: They add a deep red color, sweet-sour zing and moisture to burgers.

If the cranberry lobby can get their product into the National School Lunch Program as a meat extender, cranberries might satisfy not only USDA “meat/meat alternative” dietary requirements – they could also represent a serving of fruit, or more. Keep in mind that pizza with two tablespoons of tomato paste qualifies as a vegetable in the eyes of Congress. Proanthocyanidins, anyone?

This article was originally published on The Conversation website under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read the original article here.

Airlines are under pressure to reduce their carbon emissions, and are highly vulnerable to global oil price fluctuations. These challenges have spurred strong interest in biomass-derived jet fuels. Bio-jet fuel can be produced from various plant materials, including oil crops, sugar crops, starchy plants and lignocellulosic biomass, through various chemical and biological routes. However, the technologies to convert oil to jet fuel are at a more advanced stage of development and yield higher energy efficiency than other sources.

We are engineering sugarcane, the most productive plant in the world, to produce oil that can be turned into bio-jet fuel. In a recent study, we found that use of this engineered sugarcane could yield more than 2,500 liters of bio-jet fuel per acre of land. In simple terms, this means that a Boeing 747 could fly for 10 hours on bio-jet fuel produced on just 54 acres of land. Compared to two competing plant sources, soybeans and jatropha, lipidcane would produce about 15 and 13 times as much jet fuel per unit of land, respectively.

Creating dual-purpose sugarcane

Bio-jet fuels derived from oil-rich feedstocks, such as camelina and algae, have been successfully tested in proof of concept flights. ASTM International, a global standards development organization, has approved a 50:50 blend of petroleum-based jet fuel and hydroprocessed renewable jet fuel for commercial and military flights.

However, even after significant research and commercialization efforts, current production volumes of bio-jet fuel are very small. Making these products on a larger scale will require further technology improvements and abundant low-cost feedstocks (crops used to make the fuel).

Sugarcane is a well-known biofuel source: Brazil has been fermenting sugarcane juice to make alcohol-based fuel for decades. Ethanol from sugarcane yields 25 percent more energy than the amount used during the production process, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 12 percent compared to fossil fuels.

Harvesting sugarcane in Brazil. Jonathan Wilkins, CC BY-SA

We wondered whether we could increase the plant’s natural oil production and use the oil to produce biodiesel, which provides even greater environmental benefits. Biodiesel yields 93 percent more energy than is required to make it and reduces emissions by 41 percent compared to fossil fuels. Ethanol and biodiesel can both be used in bio-jet fuel, but the technologies to convert plant-derived oil to jet fuel are at an advanced stage of development, yield high energy efficiency and are ready for large-scale deployment.

When we first proposed engineering sugarcane to produce more oil, some of our colleagues thought we were crazy. Sugarcane plants contain just 0.05 percent oil, which is far too little to convert to biodiesel. Many plant scientists theorized that increasing the amount of oil to 1 percent would be toxic to the plant, but our computer models predicted that we could increase oil production to 20 percent.

A bottle of oil produced from PETROSS lipidcane. Claire Benjamin/University of Illinois, CC BY-ND

Now we are working to achieve 20 percent oil – the theoretical limit, according to our computer models – and targeting this oil accumulation to the stem of the plant, where it is more accessible than in the leaves. Our preliminary research has shown that even as the engineered plants produce more oil, they continue to produce sugar. We call these engineered plants lipidcane.

Multiple products from lipidcane

Lipidcane offers many advantages for farmers and the environment. We calculate that growing lipidcane containing 20 percent oil would be five times more profitable per acre than soybeans, the main feedstock currently used to make biodiesel in the United States, and twice as profitable per acre as corn.

To be sustainable, bio-jet fuel must also be economical to process and have high production yields that minimize use of arable land. We estimate that compared to soybeans, lipidcane containing 5 percent oil could produce four times more jet fuel per acre of land. Lipidcane with 20 percent oil could produce more than 15 times more jet fuel per acre.

And lipidcane offers other energy benefits. The plant parts left over after juice extraction, known as bagasse, can be burned to produce steam and electricity. According to our analysis, this would generate more than enough electricity to power the biorefinery, so surplus power could be sold back to the grid, displacing electricity produced from fossil fuels – a practice already used in some plants in Brazil to produce ethanol from sugarcane.

A potential US bioenergy crop

Sugarcane thrives on marginal land that is not suited to many food crops. Currently it is grown mainly in Brazil, India and China. We are also engineering lipidcane to be more cold-tolerant so that it can be raised more widely, particularly in the southeastern United States on underutilized land.

A map of the growing region of cold-tolerant lipidcane. PETROSS

If we devoted 23 million acres in the southeastern United States to lipidcane with 20 percent oil, we estimate that this crop could produce 65 percent of the U.S. jet fuel supply. Presently, in current dollars, that fuel would cost airlines US$5.31 per gallon, which is less than bio-jet fuel produced from algae or other oil crops such as soybeans, canola or palm oil.

Lipidcane could also be grown in Brazil and other tropical areas. As we recently reported in Nature Climate Change, significantly expanding sugarcane or lipidcane production in Brazil could reduce current global carbon dioxide emissions by up to 5.6 percent. This could be accomplished without impinging on areas that the Brazilian government has designated as environmentally sensitive, such as rainforest.

In pursuit of ‘energycane’

Our lipidcane research also includes genetically engineering the plant to make it photosynthesize more efficiently, which translates into more growth. In a 2016 article in Science, one of us (Stephen Long) and colleagues at other institutions demonstrated that improving the efficiency of photosynthesis in lipidcane increased its growth by 20 percent. Preliminary research and side-by-side field trials suggest that we have improved the photosynthetic efficiency of sugarcane by 20 percent, and by nearly 70 percent in cool conditions.

Normal sugarcane (left) growing beside engineered PETROSS sugarcane, which is visibly taller and bushier, in field trials at the University of Florida. Fredy Altpeter/University of Florida, CC BY-ND

Now our team is beginning work to engineer a higher-yielding variety of sugarcane that we call “energycane” to achieve more oil production per acre. We have more ground to cover before it can be commercialized, but developing a viable plant with enough oil to economically produce biodiesel and bio-jet fuel is a major first step.

This article was originally published on The Conversation website under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read the original article here.

If you found this article stimulating, you may be interested in browsing related content on ScienceDirect. We are pleased to offer you a free chapter from the Sugarcane book called “Industrial Waste Recovery.”

Need a copy of your own? Visit elsevier.com and use discount code STC317 at checkout to save up to 30%!

]]>http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/jet-fuel-from-sugarcane/feed/0The Long, Strange History Of Dieting Fadshttp://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/strange-history-dieting-fads/
http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/strange-history-dieting-fads/#respondMon, 04 Dec 2017 13:46:03 +0000http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/?p=32460“Of all the parasites that affect humanity I do not know of, nor can I imagine, any more...

“Of all the parasites that affect humanity I do not know of, nor can I imagine, any more distressing than that of Obesity.”

So started William Banting‘s “Letter on Corpulence,” likely the first diet book ever published. Banting, an overweight undertaker, published the book in 1864 to espouse his success after replacing an excessive intake of bread, sugar and potatoes with mostly meat, fish and vegetables.

Since then, fad diets have appeared in many forms. To what length will people go to achieve their desired figure? As a professor of nutrition and eating behaviors, my sense is the history of dieting shows vanity outweighs common sense.

Liquid-based diets

Let’s jump back to 1028, the year William the Conqueror was born. Healthy most of his life, he became so overweight in later years that he went on a liquid diet consisting of almost nothing but alcohol. He lost enough weight to resume riding his cherished horse, but a riding accident soon led to his untimely death.

We do know of one case in which consuming more alcohol than food allegedly led to longevity. In 1558, Italian nobleman Luigi Cornarorestricted himself daily to 12 ounces of food and 14 ounces of wine. Rumor has it he lived to a ripe 102 years of age, earning his approach the nickname The Immortality Diet.

Another alcohol-focused plan, The Drinking Man’s Diet, was introduced in the 1960s. This included so-called “manly” foods like steak and fish, along with as much alcohol as desired.

Poet Lord Byron credited his thin, pale look to vinegar and water. This practice reemerged in the 1950s as the popular Apple Cider Vinegar Diet, which instructs people to drink a mixture of equal parts honey and vinegar. The latest version, although not scientifically supported, claims that three teaspoons of apple cider vinegar before each meal will curb cravings and cut fat.

Cleanses

“Cleaner” liquid diets, cleanses and detoxes are designed to supposedly rid the body of toxins, despite our natural ability to do so.

A 1950 ad for ‘vitamin candy.’ nesster/flickr, CC BY

In 1941, alternative health enthusiast Stanley Burroughs created the Master Cleanse, or Lemonade Diet, to eliminate cravings for junk food, alcohol, tobacco and drugs. All you had to do was consume a mixture of lemon or lime juice, maple syrup, water and cayenne pepper six times a day for at least 10 days. Beyoncé made this popular again in 2006, saying she lost 20 pounds in two weeks.

TV physician Dr. Oz and others have since promoted their own versions, varying in length and foods allowed. Most include a daily laxative and copious amounts of water.

The Last Chance Diet, published in 1976, consisted of drinking a very low-calorie liquid a few times per day. The main ingredient was a blend of predigested animal byproducts – think hide, horns and tendons. This “meat smoothie” was taken off the market after several followers died.

More recently, the Green Juice plan became popular. Many were captivated by the promise of a deep cleanse or quick weight loss, while others saw it as an easy way to consume more fruits and vegetables. One of the original recipes called for apples, celery, cucumber, kale, lemon and ginger.

Celebrity diets

Andy Warhol had a different approach to maintaining his physique. He reportedly ordered foods he disliked when out at restaurants, asking for a to-go box upon leaving. He would then give this to a homeless person.

Sleeping was another possibility. Elvis Presley was rumored to be an advocate of the Sleeping Beauty Diet. Its long pill-induced sleeping bouts were said to inhibit eating.

A more recent effort to mimic celebrities, the Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet was joined by the Hollywood 24 Hour Miracle Diet, the Hollywood Daily Miracle Diet Drink Mix Meal Replacement and various dietary supplements.

Get slim quick

In the early 1900s, overweight businessman Horace Fletcher slimmed down and made dieting a pop culture phenomenon with his Chewing Diet. He recommended chewing food until it became liquid to prevent overeating.

Another method rumored to be popular in the early 1900s was the Tapeworm Diet. Theoretically, one would swallow a tapeworm or tapeworm pills. The worm would then live in your stomach and consume some of your food. While vintage advertisements have been found, there is no evidence that tapeworms were actually sold.

Tapeworm, anyone? fdaphotos/flickr

Other diets have allured fans over the years with the promise of easy weight loss through a single miraculous food. There’s the Grapefruit Diet, which recommends half a grapefruit before every meal; The Peanut Butter Diet and the Ice Cream Diet, both promising as much of said food daily as desired; and the Shangri-La Diet in 2006, which claimed you could beat hunger by drinking olive oil about an hour before each meal.

One standout example was the Cabbage Soup Diet, first popularized by celebrities in the 1950s. This diet involved consuming nothing but soup for seven days. The original recipe called for cabbage, vegetables, water and dry onion soup mix, but other renditions added ingredients like fruit, skim milk and beef. It became trendy again every ten years or so, with the internet making it easier to share.

Alternative ideas

Some diets and their supporting theories went beyond food.

In 1727, writer Thomas Short observed that overweight people lived near swamps. His Avoiding Swamps Diet thus recommended moving away from swamps.

Instead of moving away from swamps, Breatharianism recommends not eating. Followers in a 2017 interview claimed food and water are unnecessary, saying they subsist on spirituality and sunlight alone. The prolonged fasting would eventually lead to starvation, but devotees have been spotted eating and drinking.

The more dangerous Cotton Ball Diet surfaced in 2013. Dieters reported consuming up to five cotton balls at a time, saying they felt full and lost weight. With its unfortunate side effect of intestinal obstruction, this diet faded away.

But not all unusual ideas are bad. The Seven Day Color Diet, published in 2003, suggested eating foods of only one color each day. For example, red day would include tomatoes, apples and cranberries. This actually emphasizes healthful foods to include, rather than crazy concoctions or restrictions.

While intriguing, fad diets are usually short-term quick fixes. They may produce initial rapid weight loss, but this is more likely due to their lower calorie intake than the follower’s usual diet, and often consists of water loss.

Instead, we should remember that there’s no simple secret to losing weight. Achieving sustained weight loss and maintenance requires reducing your calorie intake and increasing your activity levels – with or without grapefruit and cabbage.

This article was originally published on The Conversation website under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read the original article here.

]]>http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/strange-history-dieting-fads/feed/0Changing The Face Of Indian Farminghttp://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/changing-indian-farming/
http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/changing-indian-farming/#respondThu, 30 Nov 2017 03:37:17 +0000http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/?p=32424Indian agriculture is expected to feed a growing and increasingly urbanised population. But if everyone wants to move...

Indian agriculture is expected to feed a growing and increasingly urbanised population. But if everyone wants to move to towns and cities, who is left to farm the land?

“The farming is left to the older women – the mothers and sometimes the grandmothers. They’re in the difficult situation of having to make do in households where incomes are falling.” — Shailaja Fennell

The rains are less reliable. Sudden heat waves create challenging conditions for crops. Poor harvests result not only in debt, but also in malnutrition for smallholder farmers. Farming in India is not an attractive career option.

Many Indian farmers are turning their backs on the life altogether. The pull of the city, with the promise of better work and a better income, is drawing huge numbers of rural Indians away from the land.

Women in India have always been involved in farming, typically doing work between the traditionally ‘male jobs’ of sowing and harvesting, such as weeding and applying fertiliser. But they usually work land that belongs to their husbands’ families, and when households become more impoverished they have to work harder yet still earn less than the men.

“It’s becoming difficult to get a reliable income from agriculture in many parts of the Indian subcontinent,” says Dr Shailaja Fennell, from the Centre of Development Studies. “It’s quite common for the majority of younger family members to go to a town to look for work. In the last decade in regions like the Punjab – which benefited from the Green Revolution – even many of the young women are leaving the land, to study at school and college.

“So now the farming is left to the older women – the mothers and sometimes the grandmothers. They’re in the difficult situation of having to make do in households where incomes are falling. In poorer states such as Odisha, this can lead to malnourishment, which has long-term effects on the children.”

The record grain outputs of India’s ‘Green Revolution’ in the 1970s and 1980s established the country as one of the world’s largest agricultural producers, sustaining its booming population and boosting its economy. But the level of success varied from region to region, and the continued overuse of water, fertilisers and pesticides, together with post-harvest crop losses, has put increasing pressure on natural resources. India’s rapid population growth continues, and the UN estimates it will surpass China by 2022 to become the most populous country in the world. And more people means more mouths to feed.

Fennell is a co-investigator of TIGR2ESS: a new, large-scale, multi-partner project that has just been awarded £6.9m funding from the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) by Research Councils UK to address this complex web of issues. Drawing together a formidable network of partners from research, industry, government and NGOs in the UK and India, the project aims to define the requirements for a second, more sustainable Green Revolution, and to deliver this through a suite of research programmes, training workshops and educational activities.

The funding forms part of the UK government’s Official Development Assistance commitment, and partners from both countries will work together, with over 22 new researchers funded in both the UK and India.

“India is developing fast. A new approach is urgently needed to ensure a more resilient outcome for the future of the country’s food production,” says plant scientist Professor Howard Griffiths, who leads TIGR2ESS. “To be successful, we need to address the challenges in India today, from equality and sustainability in agriculture, to the problems associated with climate change.”

The empowerment of women will be a key theme of this multifaceted project. Providing India’s women with the skills and knowledge to contribute to improved food security for their country, and better nutrition for their families, will take various approaches. The UK–Indian partnership will set up ‘nutrition kitchens’ in Indian villages alongside existing health centres to run monthly cooking classes and provide nutrition-relevant education. And in the field, workshops will educate female farmers to help them improve their farming practices.

Inset image: A farmer at work weeding in a maize field in the Indian state of Bihar. Credit: M. DeFreese/CIMMYT.

“Some crops, like certain varieties of millet for example, are currently used only for animal feed,” says Griffiths. “But they have a better nutrient balance and are more climate resilient than the preferred staples like wheat, so switching may partly be a question of education.”

“In parallel, our research will be looking for ways to increase the value of these crops, to raise family incomes,” adds Fennell. “These are very specific interventions that have huge potential impact. TIGR2ESS will bring together science and social science to drive interventions that actually work for Indian farmers and their communities.”

TIGR2ESS will include fundamental research addressing crop productivity and water use in India, and will identify appropriate crops and farming practices for different climatic regions. It also includes a capacity-building programme of researcher exchanges between the UK and India to ensure skills development and build expertise for the longterm. And it will draw on expertise at Cambridge’s Centre for Science and Policy with the aim of bringing about policy change in India, to ensure that it is not just the men who receive farming support.

“Recognising that an increasing number of India’s smallholder farmers are women, we need to ensure that state resources and services, and knowledge, are equally accessible to them,” says Dr V. Selvam, Executive Director of the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, one of the India-based project partners.

“The ultimate impact of TIGR2ESS will be to deliver sustainable practices and improved food security, whilst promoting equal opportunities and enhancing nutrition and health for rural communities across different regions and climatic zones in India,” says Griffiths. “For Cambridge, this is an opportunity to build on our commitment to international scientific excellence and to translate this into real benefits for society through our partnership with India’s Department of Biotechnology and institutions across India.”

Changing the way we eat, grow and distribute food

While TIGR2ESS focuses on improving India’s food production, a £340m EU Innovation programme involving Cambridge aims to put Europe at the centre of a global revolution in food innovation and production.

Around 795 million people worldwide don’t have access to enough food to meet their minimum daily energy requirements, while at least two billion consume too many calories but don’t get the nutrients they need. Both the hungry and the overweight suffer the health consequences of poor diet.

And while our increasing population is creating a growing demand for food, 25% of what we already produce is going to waste. Add to this the changing climate affecting crop growing conditions, rapid urbanisation and the increasing demand for resource-intensive foods like meat – the net result is a food system that’s increasingly under pressure.

Cambridge is one of several European universities and companies that last year won access to a £340m EU Innovation programme to change the way we eat, grow and distribute food.

The project, funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and called EIT Food, has ambitious aims to halve the amount of food waste in Europe within a decade, and to reduce ill health caused by diet by 2030.

“Sustainability is a top-level agenda which is engaging both global multinational food producers and academics,” says Professor Howard Griffiths, who helped to lead Cambridge’s involvement in EIT Food, a consortium of 55 partners from leading European businesses, research centres and universities across 13 countries.

“Our joint goal is in making the entire food system more resilient in the context of a changing climate, and improving health and nutrition for people across the world.”

This article was originally published on the University of Cambridge website under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read the original article here.

]]>http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/changing-indian-farming/feed/0Micro Solutions for a Macro Problem: How Marine Algae Could Help Feed the Worldhttp://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/micro-marine-algae-feed-world/
http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/micro-marine-algae-feed-world/#respondMon, 27 Nov 2017 16:52:23 +0000http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/?p=32375Our planet faces a growing food crisis. According to the United Nations, more than 800 million people are regularly undernourished....

Meeting this challenge involves not only providing sufficient calories for every person, but also assuring a balanced diet that includes the protein and nutrients that are essential to good health. In a newly published study, we explain how marine microalgae could be a sustainable solution for solving global macro-hunger.

Problems with current food production systems

The current Western diet requires vast amounts of land, water and energy, is heavily polluting and is a major contributor to climate change. Providing nutritious food for an ever-growing global population with increasing per capita demand is pushing our current food production system beyond its limits.

Fish are an important source of omega-3 fatty acids and essential amino acids that make up our proteins. However, eating fish has some downsides. They can concentrate heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals in their tissues and pass them on to us. Furthermore, most ocean fisheries are overfished or at maximum production.

An alternative approach: Cutting out the ‘middle fish’

In our paper, we propose an alternative solution: commercial production of marine microalgae as a staple human food and feed for animals and farmed fish. These tiny organisms are the ultimate source of omega-3 fatty acids and amino acids that humans need in our diets, and which many of us get by eating fish. But fish are merely aquatic intermediaries in the nutrition business. We can feed the world more efficiently by “cutting out the middle fish.”

Microalgae are a nearly untapped resource, and are found in both freshwater and marine aquatic systems. Although they are only few micrometers in size, they produce amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, polymers and carbohydrates.

For example, the omega-3 rich microalgae Nannochloropsis oculata, or simply Nanno, is a promising potential source of high-nutrient food and feed. It is 40 percent protein by dry weight, of which one-third contains essential amino acids, and 6 percent EPA omega-3 essential fatty acid in a highly bioavailable form.

Only a handful of algal species are used commercially now, but hundreds of strains have the potential to become food and feed sources. Microalgae are currently used as a food ingredient, a food supplement and as aquafeed for fish.

Producing Nanno

Microalgae are commercially cultivated using several methods that have a range of sustainability footprints. The first is an aerobically fermented system, where cultivation is performed in dark, mixing vessels using sugar as the main energy source for the algae. Algae may also be cultivated in open ponds, using either fresh- or saltwater, carbon dioxide and sunlight. Alternatively, they may be grown in brackish water or seawater in closed, transparent tubes called photobioreactors.

Nanno is currently being grown at a commercial scale using brackish water in outdoor ponds with added carbon dioxide in Texas, and in photobioreactors using seawater and carbon dioxide at a geothermal power station in Iceland. Here sunlight is replaced by efficient LED lights powered by inexpensive, zero-polluting renewable electricity from the power plant.

Photobioreactors require the least amount of water and fertile land. These reactors are like LEGO blocks that can be stacked vertically. Since it is a closed system, this approach minimizes loss of water through evaporation.

One sustainability metric for comparing protein production from animals, plants and marine algae is the amount of land and water needed to produce an equal quantity of essential amino acids from each type of food. We calculate that producing one kilogram of beef-sourced essential amino acids requires 148,000 liters of freshwater and 125 square meters of fertile land. In contrast, producing the same amount from Nanno raised in an open pond with brackish water requires only 20 liters of freshwater and 1.6 square meters of nonfertile land.

Land and water requirements for the production of essential amino acids from various sources: freshwater usage and annual land productivity.Industrial Biotechnology, CC BY-ND

Counterintuitively, some plant protein requires very large amounts of land and water, even relative to some meat sources. For example, peas require about twice as much freshwater and 6.5 times the footprint of fertile land to produce the same amount of essential amino acids as chicken.

Turning microalgae into food products

How does one eat Nanno? Currently it comes as a soft gel capsule of marine microalgae oil, marketed as an alternative to krill or fish oil as a daily source for omega-3’s. In powdered form, whole algae or algae extract could serve as an ingredient in health bars, sports snacks or pasta. Whole algae, such as Spirulina and Chlorella, are already commercially viable and have entered the market, along with other algae-based products such as algal tea and algal flour.

In its current form Nanno can be used as a protein and fatty acid supplement to improve the nutritional level of undernourished people around the world, and as feed for farmed fish and livestock. Most algae-based products are marketed in the United States as dietary supplements, but we believe the time has arrived to introduce algae-based foods to the dining table.

In aquatic ecosystems, such as the Great Lakes, microalgae form the base of food webs.Michigan Sea Grant

A number of companies already offer innovative alternative meat products, which have the potential to become large-scale food sources with nutritional content and taste comparable to meat. But products based on potatoes, wheat and soy still consume large amounts of freshwater and arable land, with the same environmental disadvantages of current agriculture.

By our calculation, pea- and soy-based alternative meat products with similar nutritional amino acid value to Nanno could be produced using 6.4 times less freshwater than beef, but would require 2.2 times more fertile land. In contrast, using marine microalgae reduces land usage by over 75-fold, since no fertile land is required, and lowers freshwater usage by a factor of 7,400.

Our paper describes a sustainable system for cultivating microalgae that is economically viable. The next step is persuading food scientists to utilize it as the basis for alternative meat products. Chefs and connoisseurs, gastronomes and gourmands, consumers and critics can all help the planet by taking part in a global transition to algae-burgers.

Isaac Berzin, founder and CTO of Algaennovation, contributed to this article.

This article was originally published on The Conversation website under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read the original article here.

Last month, during the Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo in Chicago, author, Jacqueline B. Marcus, MS, RD, LD, CNS, FADA received the Medallion Award. As one of 7 to receive this honour, Jacqueline is recognized for her outstanding service and contribution to the nutrition and dietetics profession.

As President/Owner of Jacqueline B. Marcus & Associates, a multi-service food and nutrition consulting firm in Northfield, Illinois, USA, Jacqueline holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Family, Consumer, and Nutrition Sciences, and a Master of Science degree in Food and Nutrition from Northern Illinois University.

Additionally, Jaqueline Marcus has received an Honourable Mention in Communicating Science-Related Knowledge to Consumers Aimed at Improving their Lifestyle, International Union of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST) during the 4th IUFoST Global Food Industry Awards (2014). She has also been awarded the Best Author or Chef for Professionals, Gourmand International, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2014.

About the book

Culinary Nutrition: The Science and Practice of Healthy Cooking is the first textbook specifically written to bridge the relationship between food science, nutrition and culinology as well as consumer choices for diet, health and enjoyment. The book uses a comprehensive format with real-life applications, recipes and color photographs of finished dishes to emphasize the necessity of sustainably deliverable, health-beneficial and taste-desirable products.

Jacqueline Marcus is currently working on a book presenting a three-pronged approach to ensuring proper nutrition for the aging population. The book, Aging, Nutrition and Taste Nutrition, Food Science and Culinary Perspectives for Aging Tastefully will provide unique and valuable insights for those developing and implementing nutritional strategies for the aging population. It is slated for publication January 2019 and we are very excited to be working with Jacqueline again!

Visit elsevier.com to purchase your very own copy! Enter code STC317 at checkout for 30% off plus free shipping.

]]>http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/jacqueline-marcus-author-and-expert-extraordinaire/feed/0Sugar In The Diet May Increase Risks Of Opioid Addictionhttp://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/sugar-diet-opioid-addiction/
http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/sugar-diet-opioid-addiction/#respondThu, 16 Nov 2017 23:06:27 +0000http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/?p=32329Could a diet high in refined sugars make children and adults more susceptible to opioid addiction and overdose?...

]]>As North America’s opioid crisis worsens, schools across Canada are purchasing naloxone anti-overdose kits. Research suggests that risks of opioid addiction could also be addressed through attention to children’s nutrition. (Shutterstock)

Could a diet high in refined sugars make children and adults more susceptible to opioid addiction and overdose? New research, from our laboratory of behavioral neuroscience at the University of Guelph, suggests it could.

To explore the possible role of a sugar-rich diet in opioid addiction, we investigated whether unlimited access to high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) altered rats’ neural and behavioural responses to the semi-synthetic opioid, oxycodone.

Our findings suggest that a diet high in corn syrup may dampen the reward associated with oxycodone and may therefore encourage consumption of higher quantities of the drug.

Recently, our laboratory has been exploring the impact of HFCS on behaviours and brain markers of addiction in laboratory rats. In one study conducted by my PhD student Meenu Minhas, animals had unrestricted around-the-clock access to bottles containing a water solution sweetened by HFCS. After about a month of voluntary drinking, the bottles were removed and, after a few sugar-free days, animals’ behavioural and neural responses to oxycodone were assessed.

Public health officials recommend school administrators buy a naloxone anti-overdose kit, like the one shown in this 2017 file photo, if they are aware of drug use on or near to school grounds. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward)

Similar to other opioids, oxycodone induces pharmacological effects that include analgesia, euphoria and feelings of relaxation. Some common street names include: “hillbilly heroin,” “perc,” and “OC.” Oxycodone is the active ingredient in a number of formulations which include intravenous injections, immediate release solutions/capsules (Percocet, Percodan, OXY IR, OXY FAST), and extended release preparations (OxyContin).

Dampening drug’s reward may increase use

At the neural level, HFCS exposure decreased oxycodone-induced release of dopamine, which is a desire-promoting neurotransmitter active in the brain’s reward circuits.

Furthermore, at low doses, sedative drugs like opioids and alcohol normally interfere with inhibition and stimulate a variety of “psychomotor” behaviors — such as sociability, extroversion, talkativeness, sensation seeking and interest in novelty. Our study in rats found that exposure to the high fructose corn syrup reduced this psychomotor stimulation induced by oxycodone.

(Shutterstock)

Our experiments show that chronic exposure to high fructose corn syrup had an impact on both the neural and behavioural responses to oxycodone, resulting in changes likely to affect drug-taking and drug-seeking behaviour. They suggest that a high sugar diet may dampen the reward associated with a given dose of oxycodone. And that this may cause people to consume more of the drug.

These results suggest that nutrition, and high fructose corn syrup intake in particular, can influence responses to opioids — a finding that may be relevant both to clinical uses of opioids and to treatment of addiction.

We can win the war on opioid addiction only if we tackle the problem from multiple angles. Our findings, and those of other laboratories, strongly suggest that prevention of unhealthy diets may not only help reduce the obesity epidemic, but also reduce environmental factors that may predispose to opioid addiction.

This article was originally published on The Conversation website under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read the original article here.

Drugs of abuse exert powerful effects on the brain’s reward system, a system that has evolved to reinforce adaptive behaviors such as feeding. In some instances, intake of such substances can lead to addiction. Given that drugs of abuse are operating on the same neural pathways that evolved to enforce feeding, it has been suggested that a state of addictive-like eating is also possible. It is hypothesized that “food addiction” can develop when highly palatable foods, such as those high in fat and sugar, hyperstimulate the reward pathways. There is clinical and preclinical evidence that certain instances of compulsive overeating have striking behavioral and neurobiological similarities with substance abuse disorder. It is possible that compulsive eating could, in turn, lead to obesity, which is a leading cause of preventable death globally. This chapter explores the validity of a food addiction diagnosis using diagnostic criteria for substance use disorder and reviews behavioral and neurochemical evidence from the animal and clinical literature supporting the construct of food addiction.

Offers a modern approach to understanding the pathology of substances of abuse, offering an evidence-based ethos for understanding the neurology of addictions

Fills an existing gap in the literature by serving as a “one-stop-shopping” synopsis of everything to do with the neuropathology of drugs of addiction and substance misuse

Includes in each chapter: list of abbreviations, abstract, introduction, applications to other addictions and substance misuse, mini-dictionary of terms, summary points, 6+ figures and tables, full references

Offers coverage of preclinical, clinical, and population studies, from the cell to whole organs, and from the genome to whole body

The book is available now on ScienceDirect. Want your own copy? Enter STC317 at the checkout when you order on Elsevier.com to save up to 30%

]]>http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/sugar-diet-opioid-addiction/feed/0World Hunger is Increasing Thanks to Wars and Climate Changehttp://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/world-hunger-increasing/
http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/world-hunger-increasing/#respondThu, 16 Nov 2017 20:59:40 +0000http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/?p=32311Around the globe, about 815 million people – 11 percent of the world’s population – went hungry in...

Around the globe, about 815 million people – 11 percent of the world’s population – went hungry in 2016, according to the latest data from the United Nations. This was the first increase in more than 15 years.

Between 1990 and 2015, due largely to a set of sweeping initiatives by the global community, the proportion of undernourished people in the world was cut in half. In 2015, U.N. member countries adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which doubled down on this success by setting out to end hunger entirely by 2030. But a recent U.N. report shows that, after years of decline, hunger is on the rise again.

As evidenced by nonstop news coverage of floods, fires, refugees and violence, our planet has become a more unstable and less predictable place over the past few years. As these disasters compete for our attention, they make it harder for people in poor, marginalized and war-torn regions to access adequate food.

FAO

I study decisions that smallholder farmers and pastoralists, or livestock herders, make about their crops, animals and land. These choices are limited by lack of access to services, markets or credit; by poor governance or inappropriate policies; and by ethnic, gender and educational barriers. As a result, there is often little they can do to maintain secure or sustainable food production in the face of crises.

The new U.N. report shows that to reduce and ultimately eliminate hunger, simply making agriculture more productive will not be enough. It also is essential to increase the options available to rural populations in an uncertain world.

Conflict and climate change threaten rural livelihoods

Around the world, social and political instability are on the rise. Since 2010, state-based conflict has increased by 60 percent and armed conflict within countries has increased by 125 percent. More than half of the food-insecure people identified in the U.N. report (489 million out of 815 million) live in countries with ongoing violence. More than three-quarters of the world’s chronically malnourished children (122 million of 155 million) live in conflict-affected regions.

War hits farmers especially hard. Conflict can evict them from their land, destroy crops and livestock, prevent them from acquiring seed and fertilizer or selling their produce, restrict their access to water and forage, and disrupt planting or harvest cycles. Many conflicts play out in rural areas characterized by smallholder agriculture or pastoralism. These small-scalefarmers are some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. Supporting them is one of the U.N.‘s key strategies for reaching its food security targets.

In September 2016 Viola Tabo fled her home in Lanya village, South Sudan, after government troops executed three of her brothers. She now cultivates vegetables to supplement refugees’ diet of maize and beans at Bidi Bidi camp. Trocaire, CC BY

Disrupted and displaced

Without other options to feed themselves, farmers and pastoralists in crisis may be forced to leave their land and communities. Migration is one of the most visible coping mechanisms for rural populations who face conflict or climate-related disasters.

Globally, the number of refugees and internally displaced persons doubled between 2007 and 2016. Of the estimated 64 million people who are currently displaced, more than 15 million are linked to one of the world’s most severe conflict-related food crises in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, South Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia.

While migrating is uncertain and difficult, those with the fewest resources may not even have that option. New research by my colleagues at the University of Minnesota shows that the most vulnerable populations may be “trapped” in place, without the resources to migrate.

Displacement due to climate disasters also feeds conflict. Drought-induced migration in Syria, for example, has been linked to the conflict there, and many militants in Nigeria have been identified as farmers displaced by drought.

Supporting rural communities

To reduce world hunger in the long term, rural populations need sustainable ways to support themselves in the face of crisis. This means investing in strategies to support rural livelihoods that are resilient, diverse and interconnected.

Many large-scale food security initiatives supply farmers with improved crop and livestock varieties, plus fertilizer and other necessary inputs. This approach is crucial, but can lead farmers to focus most or all of their resources on growing more productive maize, wheat or rice. Specializing in this way increases risk. If farmers cannot plant seed on time or obtain fertilizers, or if rains fail, they have little to fall back on.

Increasingly, agricultural research and development agencies, NGOs and aid programs are working to help farmers maintain traditionally diverse farms by providing financial, agronomic and policy support for production and marketing of native crop and livestock species. Growing many different locally adapted crops provides for a range of nutritional needs and reduces farmers’ risk from variability in weather, inputs or timing.

Training, education, and literacy programs allow rural people to access a greater range of income and information sources. This is especially true for women, who are often more vulnerable to food insecurity than men.

Conflict also tears apart rural communities, breaking down traditional social structures. These networks and relationships facilitate exchanges of information, goods and services, help protect natural resources, and provide insurance and buffering mechanisms.

In many places, one of the best ways to bolster food security is by helping farmers connect to both traditional and innovative social networks, through which they can pool resources, store food, seed and inputs and make investments. Mobile phones enable farmers to get information on weather and market prices, work cooperatively with other producers and buyers and obtain aid, agricultural extension or veterinary services. Leveraging multiple forms of connectivity is a central strategy for supporting resilient livelihoods.

In the past two decades the world has come together to fight hunger. This effort has produced innovations in agriculture, technology and knowledge transfer. Now, however, the compounding crises of violent conflict and a changing climate show that this approach is not enough. In the planet’s most vulnerable places, food security depends not just on making agriculture more productive, but also on making rural livelihoods diverse, interconnected and adaptable.

This article was originally published on The Conversation website under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read the original article here.

Researchers from Japan have bred genetically engineered chickens that lay eggs carrying interferon beta, a protein known to fight diseases like cancer and hepatitis. The method could eventually cut the cost of producing this important cancer-fighting agent by 90 percent.

People often warn about the dangers of cholesterol consumed from eating too many eggs but the chicken egg has a long history in medicine. The flu vaccines are being produced using an egg-based manufacturing processfor more than 70 years. Now, researchers successfully genetically engineered chickens to lay eggs that contain a special pharmaceutical agent that can help fight cancer and other immune-related maladies.

The modified gametes were used to fertilize eggs that only produced male chicks. The hatched male chicks were crossbred with several females to rear offspring with the inherited protein-producing genes. That allowed the grown hens to themselves lay eggs containing the cancer-fighting agent in the egg whites. Currently, three females are each laying eggs every one or two days.

A research team consisting of AIST, the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization in Ibaraki Prefecture and the reagent import and sales firm Cosmo Bio Co. in Tokyo developed the method.

“This is a result that we hope leads to the development of cheap drugs,” Hironobu Hojo, a professor at Osaka University, told The Japan News.

Step forward, the researchers plan to stabilize the interferon beta contents of the eggs to produce up to 100 milligrams from a single egg. In the future, that would result in a dramatic reduction in production costs. Conventional production is expensive and just a few micrograms of the substance can cost as much as $900. A joint research company plans to start selling the drug as a research reagent next year. Starting at a price about half that of the conventional product and eventually lowering price to less than 10 percent of the current one.

At the moment, the cancer-fighting eggs are to be used only in a laboratory setting. In the next steps, they could be approved for human consumption if the chicken-laid drugs pass high safety standards for pharmaceutical drugs and inspection by health authorities.

“In the future, it will be necessary to closely examine the characteristics of the agents contained in the eggs and determine their safety as pharmaceutical products,” Professor Hojo said.

This sort of genetic engineering could go in other directions too. From the use of CRISPR for attempts at growing dinosaur legs on a chicken to the preservation of rare chicken breeds that may be resistant to global infections like the bird flu. Without a doubt, chickens and their eggs are going to remain an important subject in the coming medical science.

Learn more about genetically modified hens which could one day serve as surrogates for other birds in the video below:

You are interested in how scientists grow flu inside an egg? Watch the video below:

By Andreja Gregoric, MSc. This article was originally published on the SPLICE website under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read the original article here.

Cereal processing by-products contain several nutritional compounds such as proteins, arabinoxylans and β-glucan that could be recovered and used in several applications. For instance, the proteins of rice, corn, barley and wheat processing by-products have the appropriate functional properties to be used in food systems as it has been proposed by many researchers over the last decades. Nevertheless, their extraction is difficult since most of them are enclosed in aleurone cells and enveloped by polysaccharide clusters.

Alkaline extraction coupled with isoelectric precipitation are the classic extraction method, but there are concerns about their detrimental effects on proteins’ nutritive value and functionality. Other biotechnological and physical strategies have been assayed to improve the extractability of proteins, but these methods are not used yet, probably because they conflict with technical, economic, environmental and legislative considerations, e.g. low yields and co-generation of other by-products, difficulties of introducing new additives into the food or feed markets etc.

Application of membrane technologiesMembrane technologies offer great potential for the recovery of valuable compounds from cereal processing by-products due to their intrinsic properties and key advantages over conventional methodologies. In particular, process flow-sheets based on a combination of membrane systems in a sequential design have been proposed in order to valorize oat, wheat, rice and corn by-products.

The specific feature of these hybrid processes is the synergy resulting from this integration, with overall important benefits in product quality, plant compactness, environmental impact and energetic aspects.

The case of brewers’ spent grain (BSG)During the process of malting and brewing, the by-products left after separation of the wort are rich in protein, fibers, arabinoxylans β-glucan and polyphenols. For instance, BSG is the major by-product of the brewing industry, representing ~85% of the total by-products generated.

In Europe, the annual production of BSG on dry matter basis was around 3.5 Mt in 2007. BSG is rich in cellulose (17%), non-cellulosic polysaccharides (28%) and lignin (28%), but it also contains considerable amounts of polyphenols. Currently, BSG is sold as cattle feed, but it could be upgraded into valuable products for the food market due to its food grade nature.

ArabinoxylansArabinoxylans are one of the most abundant non-starch polysaccharides of cereal grains cell walls. Depending on cereal by-products main tissues, arabinoxylans can present different structural complexity and properties (e.g. viscous and water retention coupled with high nutritional impact and health promoting effects).

Hydrothermal, chemical and enzymatic treatments allow the recovery of different arabinoxylans, arabino-oligosaccharides and sugar monomers. Arabinoxylans can be applied as functional ingredients or soluble sources of fibre in bakery products, as well as fat replacers in dairy and meat products, whereas arabino-oligosaccharides have prebiotic properties (e.g. bifidogenic enhancement). In any case, the challenge is to match the arabinoxylans structural features with the required properties of the final products.

Biotechnological, food and health care applicationsPrimary and secondary processing of cereals results in a wide range of waste material entrapping resources that comprise an excellent substrate for the production of vanillin and industrial enzymes such as amylases, proteases, cellulases and xylanase. Besides, they could be converted into useful products and utilized in enriched foods (e.g. cookies, snacks, seasonings and flavors), prebiotics, probiotics and health care products.

The most popular application of cereal bran is their addition in baked products, e.g. to increase their fibre content. However, fortification of baked products with cereal processing by-products can affect negatively their sensory characteristics and quality of bread by providing bitterness, reducing bread’s volume and causing textural changes (porosity, elasticity). The bitter or astringent taste of wholegrain, bran and germ is due to the contained phenolic compounds (pinoresinol and syringic acid).

In order to improve the quality of end-products and retard rancidity, different pre-treatments (e.g. milling, pre-soaking, hydrothermal treatments, extraction, extrusion, fermentation, enzymatic or chemical treatment) of cereal by-products have been successfully tested before usage.

Sustainable Recovery and Reutilization of Cereal Processing By-Products addresses topics associated with the sustainable management of cereal manufacturing. Emphasis is placed on current, advisable practices, general valorization techniques of cereal processing by-products, and the functional properties of healthy cereal by-product components that lead to target applications in foods and nutraceuticals. General valorization techniques of cereal processing by-products include focus on wheat bran, distillers’ dried grains -based within the biorefinery concept, and different techniques for the separation, extraction, recovery and formulation of valuable compounds, including proteins, arabinoxylans, and beta-glucan.

Highlights the functional properties of healthy cereal by-product components that lead to target applications in foods and nutraceuticals

Over the last years, Food Waste Recovery Group has organized a series of workshops (e.g. the 2nd one comes on 2nd of July in Stuttgart), teaching activities (webinars, e-course etc) and books targeting food waste recovery processing and industrial techniques, describing tools for the implementation of innovations in the food industry, exploring the effect of emerging and non-thermal technologies on nutraceuticals and functional foods development, as well as highlighting the sustainable solutions for the management of specific food processing by-products from the olive, grape and coffee industry.

Charis M. Galanakis is an interdisciplinary scientist with a fast-expanding work that balances between food and environment, industry, and academia. His research targets mainly the separation and recovery of functional macro- and micromolecules from different food by-products, as well as their implementation as additives in food and other products. He is the coordinator of Food Waste Recovery Group of ISEKI Food Association (Vienna, Austria) and R&I director of Galanakis Laboratories (Chania, Greece).